Ben Askren

If you think that seeing a therapist is shameful, consider how you might handle a physical injury. If you’re hurt and want to overcome your injury, then you’ll see a doctor, get the surgery, and do the physical therapy to return to form. The same holds true for psychological injury. If you want to get better, then you’ll see a therapist and do the work, including being honest with yourself.

If you think your shortcomings aren’t fixable, you won’t address them, or you’ll pretend they don’t exist. As a result, your fears become self-fulfilling.

The first step is to acknowledge your imperfections. It’s critical to have a mindset in which you see yourself as flawed. ... Another part of the winner’s paradox, then, is that confidence allows you to own your flaws. Confidence begets humility and a recognition, no matter how good you are, that you have a lot to learn. And knowing that you’re a long way from perfect doesn’t make you feel ashamed—it makes you excited, because you get to continue your pursuit of excellence and keep improving as you go.

A true champion never stops improving, and this dedication to continuous improvement is one of the keys to greatness. Remember that there’s always room for growth because you’re never as good as you’re capable of being.

Truly confident people can accept corrective feedback and still maintain a positive view of themselves. In contrast, people who resist constructive criticism are usually hiding a nagging fear that they’re not good enough. If you harbor self-doubt, any criticism will bring those doubts to the surface, so you push back.

The highly trained athlete appears to perform effortlessly. In reality, they trained for thousands of hours and did the hard work while you weren’t watching to make things look so easy.

All winners put in the work. This is the one hard fact you must recognize if you want to excel. Beyond their commitment to deliberate practice, though, there is very little all winners have in common.

Just as physical flexibility gives you an enhanced range of motion and lets you compete from a greater number of positions, mental flexibility allows you to take advantage of a vast array of approaches, techniques, and styles.

We should be clear: The goal is not to be normal. The goal is to be abnormal without being pathological.

The Spanish term for wrestling is la lucha, which means ‘the struggle,’ and the mental wrestling you must do can be as difficult a struggle at times as the physical one. But it can have huge payoffs if you’re willing to fight for it.

Extreme virtues can morph into destructive vices.